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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

First finish of the year...

(Warning! Long ranting post follows...)

I've finished my first project of this new year. And although I thought it would be really quick and simple, I was wrong. Again. Story of my life lately.

I wanted to reupholster a vanity stool to match the new valances I made for our renovated bathroom. All I had to do was take off the old fabric and cushion and replace it with new foam and fabric. I figured it would take 30 minutes to an hour. In reality, it took about a week from start to finish.

First, I had trouble removing the old staples from the back. I even broke my seam ripper in the attempt. (I have no idea why I thought that might help.) After cutting both my thumbs on the staples and poking myself numerous times, I managed to remove the dozen staples holding down a piece of muslin on the back. Only to discover about another 50 or 60 staples underneath! What could they possibly have been thinking to use so many staples?

I tried removing several of these new staples before I gave up. If my husband had been home, I would have just had him cut a whole new piece of wood for the seat and started over. But he was out of town and I was determined to finish this before he got back. So instead, I cut the fabric off around each of the staples. I figured I would just staple in a different place when I reupholstered it. Once I got the fabric off, I found that they had super glued the cushion to the wood. Somebody was intent on this stool lasting forever when they made it. The cushion was fairly flat from years of use (which is partly why I wanted to replace it), but there was no way it was ever coming off. So instead I decided to just put the new foam on top of the old.

Finally I'm to the point where I can put on the new fabric. A few staples and I'd be done. (I'm an eternal optimist.) However, the staple gun ran out of staples after the first few. Do you think I had any idea where more were? Of course not. I dug around in Mr. Quilting Bug's garage looking for them in the freezing cold and finally managed to find a box. (I was still determined to finish this stool before he returned home.) Now let me ask you, do you know how to reload a staple gun? Don't you think it would be easy? Nope. It wasn't. I couldn't even manage to get the thing open. I tried and tried and then tried some more before I finally had to admit defeat. I had to wait for him to return from his trip to load it for me. It must have been stuck or something because he had a really hard time opening it too. And after all that, I finally managed to get the new seat completed and screwed back on to its base.

Luckily, I really like how it looks. But if I ever redecorate the bathroom again, I think I'll just buy a new stool and save myself the frustration.

Until later...

James 4 tells us the proper attitude to have: "Now listen you who say 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make money.' Why, you don't even know what will happen tomorrow. ... Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'"